"You have spared me the word _love_," she said, in a stern voice, "but
you have spoken of a sentiment of which I know nothing and which is
not permitted to me. You are a child; and again I pardon you, but for
the last time. Endeavor to understand, Monsieur, that my heart is, as
it were, intoxicated with motherhood. I love Monsieur de Mortsauf
neither from social duty nor from a calculated desire to win eternal
blessings, but from an irresistible feeling which fastens all the
fibres of my heart upon him. Was my marriage a mistake? My sympathy
for misfortune led to it. It is the part of women to heal the woes
caused by the march of events, to comfort those who rush into the
breach and return wounded. How shall I make you understand me? I have
felt a selfish pleasure in seeing that you amused him; is not that
pure motherhood? Did I not make you see by what I owned just now, the
_three_ children to whom I am bound, to whom I shall never fail, on whom
I strive to shed a healing dew and the light of my own soul without
withdrawing or adulterating a single particle? Do not embitter the
mother's milk! though as a wife I am invulnerable, you must never
again speak thus to me. If you do not respect this command, simple as
it is, the door of this house will be closed to you. I believed in
pure friendship, in a voluntary brotherhood, more real, I thought,
than the brotherhood of blood. I was mistaken. I wanted a friend who
was not a judge, a friend who would listen to me in those moments of
weakness when reproof is killing, a sacred friend from whom I should
have nothing to fear. Youth is noble, truthful, capable of sacrifice,
disinterested; seeing your persistency in coming to us, I believed,
yes, I will admit that I believed in some divine purpose; I thought I
should find a soul that would be mine, as the priest is the soul of
all; a heart in which to pour my troubles when they deluged mine, a
friend to hear my cries when if I continued to smother them they would